Hermione Granger is Getting Married
by Sweet Remedy
Summary: When a psychic tells Hermione she would be married within the year, her friends all panick. What would happen to their blissful nights of eating muggle takeout, drinking too much wine, and bringing unknown men home from parties? rewritten Please R&R.


Hermione Granger is Getting Married  
  
Chapter One  
  
When Meredia reminded me that the four of us from the office were due a visit to "a witch with the Third Eye" the following Monday, my stomach lurched.  
  
"You've forgotten," accused Meredia, her chubby face aquiver.  
  
I had.  
  
She slapped her hand down on her desk and warned, "Don't even think of trying to tell met that you're not coming."  
  
"Damn," I whispered, because that was just what I had been about to do. Not because I had any objections to having my future foretold. On the contrary—it was usually good for a laugh. Especially when they got to the part where they told me that the man of my dreams was just around the next corner. That part was always hilarious.  
  
Even I laughed.  
  
But I was poor. Although I had just been paid, my vault in Gringotts was a post-holocaust, corpse-strewn wasteland because the day I'd been paid, I'd spent a fortune on aromatherapy oils that had promised to rejuvenate, energize, and uplift me.  
  
And bankrupt me, except it didn't say that on the packaging. But I think the idea was that I'd be so rejuvenate and energized and uplifted that I wouldn't care.  
  
So when Meredia reminded me that I'd committed myself to paying some woman thirty Galleons so that she could tell me that I would travel around the word in a second and that I was quite gifted with the Third Eye myself, I realized that I'd be going without lunch for two weeks.  
  
"I'm not sure I can afford it," I said nervously.  
  
"You can't back out now!" thundered Meredia. "Mrs. Nolan is giving us a discount. The rest of us will have to pay more if you don't come."  
  
"Who's this Mrs. Nolan?" Ginny asked suspiciously, looking up from her concentration of moving the quill from one of the desk to another. She was suppose to be writing a summary of the company's economic situation (which was suppose to be due over a month ago).  
  
"The witch," said Meredia.  
  
"What kind of name is Mrs. Nolan?" demanded Ginny.  
  
"She's Irish," protested Meredia.  
  
"No!" Ginny tossed her silky red hair in annoyance, "I mean, what kind of name is 'Mrs. Nolan' for a Third Eyed witch?" she should be called Madam Zora or something like that. She can't be called 'Mrs. Nolan.' How can we believe a word that she says?"  
  
"Well, that's her name," Meredia sounded hurt.  
  
"And why didn't she change it?" said Ginny. "There's nothing to it, so I'm told. Isn't that right, so called Meredia?"  
  
A pregnant pause.  
  
"Or should I say 'Catherine'?" Ginny continued with triumph.  
  
"No, you shouldn't," said Meredia. "My name is Meredia."  
  
"Sure..." said Ginny, with great sarcasm.  
  
"It is!" said Meredia hotly.  
  
"So let's see your birth certificate," challenged Ginny.  
  
Ginny and Meredia didn't see eye to eye on most things and especially not on Meredia's name. Ginny was a no-nonsense British with low bullshit threshold. Since she had arrived three months ago as a temp, she had insisted that Meredia wasn't Meredia's real name. She was probably right. Although I was very fond of Meredia, I had to agree that her name had a certain makeshift, ramshackle, cobbled-together-out-of-old-egg-cartons feel to it.  
  
But unlike Ginny I couldn't really see a problem with that.  
  
"So it's definitely not 'Catherine'?" Ginny took a piece of parchment from her bag and drew a line through something.  
  
"No," Meredia said stiffly.  
  
"Right," said Ginny. "That's all the Cs done. Time for the Ds. Daphne? Deirdre? Dolores? Denise? Diana? Dinah?"  
  
"Shut up!" said Meredia, clearly on the verge of tears.  
  
"Stop it." Susan put a gentle hand on Ginny's arm, because that's the kind of thing that Susan did. Although Susan was rich, she was also a good, kind person, who poured oil on troubled waters. Which meant, of course, that she wasn't much fun, but no one was perfect.  
  
"I wish that bitch would leave," Meredia muttered to Susan.  
  
"It probably won't be long now," Susan said soothingly.  
  
"When are you going to leave?" Meredia demanded of Ginny.  
  
"As soon as I've got the cash," Ginny replied.  
  
Ginny was going her grand tour of the world and had temporarily run out of money. But as soon as she had enough money to go, she was going—she constantly reminded us—to Scandinavia or Japan or the Pyrenees or the Bahamas.  
  
Until then Susan and I would have to break up the vicious fights that broke out regularly. Ginny was tall and tanned and gorgeous. Meredia let herself go after we all graduated from Hogwarts, and she became short (due to lost of exercise, she was shorter than the rest of us), fat, and not gorgeous. Meredia was jealous of Ginny's beauty, while Ginny despised Meredia's excess weight. When Meredia couldn't buy clothes to fit her, instead of making sympathetic noises like the rest of us did, Ginny barked, "Stop whining and go on a bloody diet!"  
  
But Meredia never did. And in the meantime she was condemned to cause cars to swerve whenever she walked down the road. Because instead of trying to disguise her size with vertical stripes and dark colors, she seemed to dress to enhance it. She went for the layered look, layers and layers and layers of fabric. Really, lots. Acres of fabric, yards and yards of velvet, draped and pinned and knotted and tied, anchored with broaches, attached with scarves, pinned and arranged along her sizeable girth.  
  
And the more colors the better. Crimson and vermilion and sunburst orange and flame red and magenta.  
  
And that was just her hair.  
  
"One of us has got to go. It's either me or her," muttered Meredia, as she glared balefully at Ginny.  
  
But it was just bravado, Meredia had worked in our office for a very long time—to hear her tell it, since the dawn of time; in reality, about eight years—and she had never managed to secure another job. Nor had she been promoted. This she bitterly blamed on a sizeist management. (Although there seemed to be no bar to any number of tubby men on the fast track to success, reaching all kinds of exalted positions within the ranks of company.)  
  
Anyway, wimp that I was, I gave in to Meredia about the visit to the witch. I even managed to persuade myself that having no money would be a good thing—being forced to go without lunch for two weeks would be good for my diet.  
  
And Meredia reminded me of something I'd overlooked.  
  
"You've just split up with Seamus," she said. "You were due a visit to the Third Eyed witch anyway."  
  
Although I didn't like to admit it, she was probably right. Now that I had discovered that Seamus wasn't the man of my dreams, it was only a matter of time before I made some sort of psychic inquiries to find out exactly who was. That was the kind of thing that my friends and I did, even though none of us believed the witches (or wizards). At least, none of us would admit to believing them.  
  
Poor Seamus. What a disappointment he'd turned out to be.  
  
Especially as it had started with such promise. I had thought he was gorgeous—his only average good looks were upgrade, in my eyes, to Adonis class, by blonde curly hair, black leather pants and a motorcycle. He seemed wild and dangerous and carefree—well, he would, wouldn't he? What were motorcycles and black leather pants if not the uniform of a wild, dangerous, and carefree man?  
  
Of course, I thought I hadn't a hope with him, that someone as beautiful as him would have his pick of the girls and that he certainly wouldn't have any interest in someone as ordinary as me.  
  
Because I really was ordinary. I certainly looked ordinary. I had ordinary brown curly hair, and I spent so much on antifrizz hair products that it would probably have been more efficient if I'd had my salary paid directly to Madam Leona's Magical Cosmetic Products, a store near work. I had ordinary brown eyes and ordinary teeth (ever since second year).  
  
But despise all my ordinariness, Seamus had asked me out and acted as if he liked me.  
  
At first I could barely understand why such a sexy man like Seamus wanted to be with me.  
  
And, naturally, I didn't believe a word that came out of his mouth. When he said that I was the only girl in his life, I assumed that he was lying, when he told me I was lovely, I looked for an angle on it, walked all around it, inspecting it, to see what he wanted from me.  
  
I didn't even really mind not taking his compliments at face value; I just assumed that those were the kind of terms on which you went out with a man like Seamus.  
  
It took a while for me to realize that he was sincere and that he wasn't saying it to all the girls.  
  
At this point, I tentatively decided that I was delighted, but what I really was was confused. I had been so sure that he had a whole secret other life, one that I was supposed to know nothing about—middle-of-the- night dashes on the Harley to have sex on the beach with unknown women and that sort of thing—he looking that type.  
  
I had expected a short-lived, passionate, roller coaster of an affair, where my nerves would be stretched to the snapping point waiting for his call; my whole body flooder with ecstasy when he did call.  
  
Unfortunately, he always called when he would. And he always said that I looked gorgeous, no matter what I wore. But instead of being happy, I felt uncomfortable.  
  
What I saw was what I got, and I began to feel strangely short-changed by life.  
  
He had started liking me too much.  
  
One morning I woke up and he was propped on his elbow, staring down at me. "You're beautiful," he murmured, and it felt so wrong.  
  
When we had sex he said, "Hermione, Hermione, oh God, Hermione," millions of times, all feverishly and passionately and I tried to join in and be all feverish and passionate also, but I just felt silly.  
  
And the more he seemed to like, the less I liked him until in the end I could barely breathe around him.  
  
I was suffocating from his adulation, smothering in his admiration. I wasn't that attractive. , I couldn't help thinking, and if he thought that I was, it meant there was something wrong with him.  
  
"Why do you like me?" I asked him, over and over.  
  
"Because you're beautiful," or "Because you're sexy," or "Because you're all woman," were the nauseating replies that he gave me.  
  
"No, I'm not," I would reply desperately. "How can you say that I am?"  
  
"Anyone would think you were trying to convince me not to like you." He smiled tenderly.  
  
The tenderness was probably what drove me over the edge. His tender smiles, his tender gazes, his tender kisses, his tender caresses, so much tenderness, it was a nightmare.  
  
And he was so touchy-feely! Mr. Tactile—I couldn't bear it.  
  
Everywhere we went he held my hand. When we were driving he planted his hand on my thigh, when we were watching television he almost laid on tip of me. He was always stroking my arm or rubbing my hair or caressing my back, until I could bear it no more and had to push him away.  
  
Velcro man, that's what I called him in the end.  
  
And eventually to his face.  
  
As time went on, I wanted to tear my skin off every time he touched he touched me, and the thought of having sex with him made me feel sick. One day he said he'd love a huge backyard and houseful of kids and that was it!  
  
I broke up with him immediately.  
  
And I couldn't understand how I had once found him so attractive, because by then I couldn't think of a more repulsive man on the face of the earth. He still had the blonde hair and the leather pants and the motorcycle, but I was no longer fooled by them.  
  
I despised him for liking me so much. I wondered how he could settle for so little.  
  
None of my friends could understand hwy I had broken up with him. "But he was great" was their cry. "But he was such a catch." They protested. To which I replied, "No, he wasn't a catch isn't suppose to be that easy."  
  
He had disappointed me.  
  
I had expected disrespect and instead got devotion, I had expected infidelity and instead got commitment, I had expected upheaval and instead got predictability and (most disappoint of all) I had expected a wolf and had gotten a sheep.  
  
It's upsetting when the nice guy you really like turns out to be a complete, lying, two-timing bastard. But it's nearly as bad when the guy that you thought was an unreliable heartbreaker turns out to be uncomplicated and nice.  
  
I spent a couple of days wondering why I liked the guys who weren't nice to me? Why couldn't I like the ones who were?  
  
Would I despise every man who ever treated me well? Was I fated only to want men that didn't want me?  
  
I woke up in the middle of the night wondering about my sense of self- worth—why was I comfortable only when I was being ill realized?  
  
Then I realized that the saying "Treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen" had been around for hundreds of years. And I relaxed—after all, I didn't make the rules.  
  
So what if my ideal man was a selfish, dependable, unfaithful, loyal, treacherous, loving flirt who thought the world of me, never called when he said he would, made me feel like the most special woman in the universe and flirted with all my friends? Was it my fault that I wanted a Schrödinger's cat of a boyfriend, a man who was several directly conflicting things simultaneously?  
  
A/N: Hey, I changed everything! It's the first chapter, and I hope I didn't have so much spelling or gramatic errors. Hope you enjoy! 


End file.
